The Girl Who Hid | ✓

|127| Runaway Ron

Harry and I gazed at each other; I felt that the answer was dangling invisibly in the air above us, tantalizingly close. Why hadn't Dumbledore told me? Or had he, in fact, told Harry and me, but we had not realized it at the time?

"Think!" whispered Hermione. "Think! Where would he have left it?"

"Not at Hogwarts," I said, pacing as I did when stressed.

"Somewhere in Hogsmeade?" suggested Hermione.

"The Shrieking Shack?" said Harry. "Nobody ever goes in there."

"But Snape knows how to get in, wouldn't that be a bit risky?"

"Agreed," I commented.

"Dumbledore trusted Snape," Harry reminded her.

"Not enough to tell him that he had swapped the swords," said Hermione.

"True," I breathed and I felt even more cheered at the thought that Dumbledore had had some conversations about Snape's trustworthiness. "So, would he have hidden the sword well away from Hogsmeade, then? What d'you reckon, Ron? Ron?"

At my panic, Harry and Hermione looked around the tent and I saw Ron lying in the shadow of the lower bunk, looking stony.

"Oh, remembered me, have you?" he said.

"What?"

Ron snorted as he stared up at the underside of the upper bunk.

"You three carry on. Don't let me spoil your fun."

"What's the problem?" I asked.

"Problem? There's no problem," said Ron, still refusing to look at us. "Not according to you guys, anyway."

"Well, you've obviously got a problem," said Harry. "Spit it out, will you?"

Ron swung his long legs off the bed and sat up. He looked mean, unlike himself.

"All right, I'll spit it out. Don't expect me to skip up and down the tent because there's some other damn thing we've got to find. Just add it to the list of stuff you don't know."

"I don't know?" repeated Harry, "I don't know?"

Rain started to fall against the canvas over our heads; harder and heavier it patterned on the leaf-strewn bank all around them and into the river chattering through the dark.

"It's not like I'm not having the time of my life here," said Ron, "you know, with my arm mangled and nothing to eat and freezing my backside off every night. I just hoped, you know, after we'd been running around a few weeks, we'd have achieved something."

"Ron," Hermione said, but in such a quiet voice that Ron didn't hear.

"I thought you knew what you'd signed up for," I said.

"Yeah, I thought I did too," Ron spat at me.

"So what part of it isn't living up to your expectations?" asked Harry. Anger was coming to his defense now. "Did you think we'd be staying in five-star hotels? Finding a Horcrux every other day? Did you think you'd be back to Mummy by Christmas?"

"We thought you two knew what you were doing!" shouted Ron, standing up, and his words pierced me like scalding knives. "We thought Dumbledore had told you both what to do, we thought you had a real plan!"

"Ronald!" said Hermione, this time clearly audible over the rain thundering on the tent roof, but again, he ignored her.

"Well, sorry to let you down," I said, my voice quite calm even though I felt hollow, inadequate at the disappointment of my friend. "We've been straight with you from the start, we told you everything Dumbledore told us. And in case you haven't noticed, we've found one Horcrux —"